Eagle Ford roads are taking a beating

By Vicki Vaughan |
March 29, 2012
| Updated: March 29, 2012 7:33pm

Traffic piles up at Texas 85 and U.S. 83 in Carrizo Springs. Companies are helping to fix roads. "We'll do this for community good will," Pam Percival of FTS International says.

Photo By JERRY LARA

Oil field-related traffic moves along FM 468 just northwest of Cotulla. Traffic is up along most of the roads in the South Texas Eagle Ford Shale play. In DeWitt County, it could cost $70 million over the course of the drilling to repair the roads.

Photo By JERRY LARA

Truck traffic related to Eagle Ford Shale work takes its toll on a highway in South Texas. Some drillers have agreed informally to pay for repairs.

Roads that were meant for the small-town traffic of ranchers and the occasional school bus now are getting pounded by heavy trucks in the Eagle Ford Shale.

To complete a single well in the oil- and gas-rich shale in South Texas, trucks must make hundreds of trips to transport equipment, water and sand to sites for drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Some county roads are dirt or caliche and have become nearly impassable, county officials said.

Fowler fears that over the course of the Eagle Ford boom, it could cost upward of $70 million to repair DeWitt County's roads. The county already bumped up, by $1 million, its road and bridge maintenance budget to $3.7 million for this fiscal year.

That won't be quite enough.

So, DeWitt County officials have come up with a plan they hope will at least help remedy the situation: making energy companies pay. Fowler has secured agreements with two drilling companies to pay $8,000 per drilled well for road maintenance. A third deal is in the works.

Fowler anticipates earning about $1.8 million in fiscal year 2012, based on the two companies' plans to drill 225 wells this year. That's still a drop in the bucket, but it's better than nothing, and it's inspired other counties - Dimmit, Bee and Atascosa among them - to follow its model.

Fowler characterized the understanding between the county and drilling companies as "a gentlemanly agreement. They don't have the force of law."

Companies likely are ponying up because they use the roads, too. But one company said its plans to chip in are more altruistic.

"We'll do this for community good will. We want to be good neighbors," said Pam Percival, a spokeswoman for oil field services company FTS International, about its plans to donate to Atascosa County.

Not enough money

It's hard for most counties to know how much money they need for road repairs, but they know they don't have enough. Even a "Band-Aid" fix can cost as much as $100,000 a mile, said David Underbrink, owner of Corpus Christi-based Naismith Engineering Inc.

And spending $100,000 a mile is "probably not a one-time shot." A county will have to spend $30,000 to $40,000 "fairly often" to maintain the road, he said.

Should a county need to widen a road and add drainage, the cost would jump to about $300,000 a mile, Underbrink said.

DeWitt County has 690 miles of county roads. Using Underbrink's estimate that $100,000 a mile is necessary for road repair, the county could be looking at around $70 million.

Drilling is intense in Dimmit County, too. "We have a lot of traffic, and it's going to get worse," County Commissioner Mike Uriegas said. "It's going to be a continual cost."

So Dimmit County is looking to set up a fee system much like DeWitt County's, and has hired a consultant to recommend what the per-well fee should be.

"The oil companies have been good partners," Uriegas said, "I think they're willing to work something out."

Yet he said he's frustrated. "I want to get the work done already, but this has to be done systematically," he said.

Bee County is seeking signed agreements with drilling companies in which they'd agree to pay $9,500 per well site to help it maintain roads, but nothing's been signed so far. Bee County Commissioner Dennis DeWitt said he's hopeful the companies will agree to pay because "they feel like the bottom line is that they need good roads, too."

No deadlines

"Each company is looking at this, and we're massaging it as we go along," DeWitt said. There's no deadline to reach an agreement. "It has to go through a lot of different people," he said.

In Atascosa County, "a lot of the roads are being torn up because they aren't set up to handle 80,000-pound trucks," said County Commissioner Bill Carroll. Maintaining the roads "is just Band-Aids right now."

Some drilling companies have been furnishing materials for the roads, Carroll said, while others have promised to kick in money later this spring.